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An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "Here are Photos/Pictures of my iPhone DSLR Prototype 1.0. This is my first attempt at putting together an iPhone DSLR. You might ask 'Why pair an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, or iPhone 4 with a DSLR lens?' Why not!" Prototype or not, it's a cool project.

Oh yeah? What SLR could you possibly buy used for $200? Oh wait. You said SLR and NOT DSLR. Heck you can find old Pentax K1000s for like $50-100 anymore. Old pentax glass is generally kind of on the cheap side too (and they make great glass!) I don't even think you could buy an original rebel DSLR for $200

This thing cannot work, unless they remove the iPhone's original lens, of which the article makes no mention. You simply cannot stack lenses like that. Compare it to what you see when you look (with your eye, which is a lens) through the rear of a lens. You see a round patch of light, not a whole view of the world. The iPhone would see the same thing. Also, if you _did_ remove the original lens, you'd end up with an enormous crop factor, turning every SLR lens into a very long tele. Try holding that steady

Really? Oh wait, there's these photos... He does seem to be getting some chromatic aberration, though.

I've done a similar thing with the large front lens from a set of binoculars on my camera as a $15 macro lens.

Works decent enough, but since I picked cheap binocs, the lens was attached to the front tube instead of being separate, so the edge shows a bit if I'm zoomed all the way out. I could saw it down but the eyepiece cap fits perfectly over the open end.

Yes. Those are photos of a defocused patch of light. My original statement still stands. The only way this would work is by taking pictures through an SLR viewfinder, which has, you know, a ground glass on which the projected image forms. You cannot otherwise stack two photographic lenses.

There is another post with the result: http://iphonedslr.com/blog/archives/62fb [iphonedslr.com]It is somewhat disappointing, to say the least. I do give some credit for posting it though. Even though things didn't work out as planned it is nice to see what happened.

That blog format of his is abysmal: it's very hard to explore, you feel like peeling data out of the blog's cold dead hands. Why do people set up their blogs such that even if there is maybe a dozen articles, you have to keep clicking and scrolling forever to see them all? It almost feels like those online news formats where a single page article is split across 15 pages, each with ads covering 80% of screen real estate... </offtopic_rant>

You don't need to be skeptical. This will produce crappy results. You're still pushing the light through a tiny dirty lens and a tiny aperture. The iphone's autofocus will be fighting your attempts to get the focus you want (unless there's a way to turn off autofocus). The iphone 4 may be a nifty point and shoot camera, but it's not SLR quality regardless of the number of pixels.

I'd title this one "I don't know anything about optics or photography, but I can machine a bracket out of aluminum."

I wasn't aware there was any autofocusing going on inside cell phone cameras? I thought they simply used their incredibly small aperture and corresponding large f ratio to get a really deep field. Consequently the optical system is very slow, leading to their abysmal low light performance.

You don't need to be skeptical. This will produce crappy results. You're still pushing the light through a tiny dirty lens and a tiny aperture

No kidding - I was looking forward to learning how he removed the iPhone's crappy lens and then got an slr lens exactly the right distance from the film plane to be useful. This was followed by a realization that he'd be wasting about 95% of the glass, since the sensor's size is a tiny fraction of a crop or 35mm sensor.

If he does stick with the iPhone lens, he's sticking the wrong optics in front. Canon and many other manufacturers make telephoto and wide angle lenses designed to fit over existing optics. This would get rid of the blue fringing, blurriness etc... in his sample pics. He could have saved a lot of time and effort by getting a Canon TC-DC58N [amazon.com] lens on eBay and modded a LADC58B [amazon.com] lens mount (or similar) to get the spacing right.

Well with a EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM imagine what the equivalent focal length is if you take crop factor into account. What would the crop factor be anyhow - 32.0?

Anyway this is not an SLR. SLR = Single Lens Reflex. Last I checked, there is no optical viewfinder, no pentaprism or pentamirror, nothing that would make it an SLR. In fact for a camera to be an SLR, technically speaking, interchangable lenses are not even required. What is required is a single lens provides the image for both the sensor/film and the optical viewfinder. This is more similar to the increasingly popular 4/3 format where the sensor provides the image for an EVF, but the lenses are interchangeable.

It is a neat project but it seems like it would be a royal pain in the ass to use. Your EF lens will be stuck at full-open aperture (so you will have no DOF) and while you are trying to use the manual focus on the lens, your iPhone will be trying to use its internal focus, making it very, very difficult to focus. It will also be incredibly difficult to hold steady enough to capture sharp images; the crop factor will be like using a really, really long lens and because the lens isn't powered by the iPhone you will not be able to use the lens's IS/VR/OS feature so there is no way to counteract camera shake. To make matters worse there is zero control over the iPhone's "shutter speed" so there is no way to even use the 1/(equivalent focal length) rule of thumb, so you would be restricted to using a very steady tripod.

Also, EF-S lenses would have been a better (and generally less expensive) choice as they mount closer to the sensor.Sample images? I didn't see any.

The crop factor is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-15, I'd guess. I'm pretty sure that the Canon 70-300/5.6 isn't sharp enough to outresolve the tiny little pixels on the sensor, so you'd be left with a greatly magnified but fuzzy mess.

This guy would have had to remove the iPhone's own lens, otherwise he couldn't focus at all -- the lens is projecting an image behind it, and there's no way the iPhone can then focus on it.

I've never heard of the Canon 35-80; I imagine that's just an old and chea

I have Canon EF lenses and have been looking for a mount so the iPhone DSLR can easily interchange the lenses. So far all the products I've looked at are fairly expensive (in the $100-$200) range.
Then I stumbled upon the Canon Extension Tube. ($8.78) from SunTek.

This tube ring mount is generally used for macro shots and can fit all Canon EOS DSLR / SLR Camera EF lenses.

Owle BuboPosted on July 6, 2010 by Jeremy SalvadorThe Owle Bubo is one of the most impressive iPhone accessories I've ever seen and I think it's going to be perfect as a housing for my iPhone DSLR. It's a camera mount that brings the best features of a camcorder to the iPhone 3GS: stability, optics, microphones and tripods!

The Owle Bubo is made of a solid piece of anodized billet aluminum making it extremely durable and virtually indestructible. This full aluminum frame gives the housing a good 1.1 lbs in weight giving the housing just enough weight to make keep the device steady. The two handle grips make it a real breeze to carry. Also the Owle provides 4 x 1/4-20 female threaded mounting holes so you can actually screw this thing into a standard tripod.

The Owle Bubo comes standard with 37mm lens threading, as well as a 0.45x wide angle/ macro lens combination. This is a real piece of optics, delivering stunning images with better color saturation, contrast and sharpness than is possible with the iPhone's camera alone. The wide angle lens accepts 49mm screw in filters. So with a 49mm-58mm step up ring, I'll be able to attach the Canon Lens Mount Adapter Ring to this housing.

Hopefully, Jeremy is something like 9 or 10.Cause, a "grown person" doing something like this and calling it a "prototype" is like "creating" a portable laser printer by getting a really long power cord and some straps on ebay.

Think you're trolling, because there are no SLR's or DSLR's with "crappy tiny sensors" around. Their sensors are all pretty close to the same size. There were two DSLR's with non-interchangeable lenses with crop factor 4 a lonnnng time ago, but I don't think you mean those.

The sensor sizes on modern DSLR's are no smaller than half the diagonal of 35mm film, and that sensor size (the Four Thirds format) is perfectly adequate to make great images. All the other sensors are bigger.

DSLR does not mean "detachable lens". It means "Digital Single Lens Reflex", or "digital camera that uses a mechanical mirror system and pentaprism to direct light from the lens to an optical viewfinder on the back of the camera".

In fact, it has nothing to do with detachable lenses. That is a completely different technology, which just happens to be commonly (but not universally) paired with (D)SLR hardware. Nor is the mechanical mirror or pentaprism contained in the lens. The SLR mechanism(s) are in the camera body, which clearly do not exist in the iPhone nor the mount that the phone and lens(es) are attached to.

What this device provides is simply detachable lenses for the iPhone camera system. Detachable lens camera systems have been available for non-SLR cameras for quite some time.

This horribly wrong use of technical terms really should not be showing up on the site that proclaims itself as "news for nerds, stuff that matters".

Also, using the iPhone will cost more than most entry level DSLR, the iPhone wont have auto focus enabled on the lenses - so basically he ends up with something way inferior more expensive, and by the looks of it, way less user friendly.

Also, with my DSLR it's the lenses and flash that weigh me down, both economically and mass, using the iPhone just give me an inferior product, with no benefits.

Absolutely right. I just purchased a Sony NEX-5 which to me is the tipping point of SLR digital camera technology. Sure, a pure DSLR will always have some advantages, but I think these are now superseded by all of the benefits gotten by the new mirror-less APS-C and Micro Four Thirds cameras.

Back to the original post, that looks like very nice industrial design, but doesn't the lens mask or occlude the flash LED? It's also nothing but a joke putting a big lens with a wide objective size in front of the

Snark: the NEX-5 isn't a DSLR either, since it doesn't have a reflex mirror. Doesn't make it suck, though -- not everything has to be a SLR to be a good camera.

Question about it -- I saw pictures of the thing and it looks so darn hard to use. No viewfinder, no real way to hold it, and badly unbalanced if you put any sort of ambitious lens on it. Obviously it takes good images, but how's the actual experience of shooting with it?

Snark? Hardly. Read again. My opinion is that cameras like the NEX-5 have the potential to replace DSLRs for the majority of people looking for cameras like that. I never said it WAS an SLR (which it obviously isn't.)

I don't have the camera in hand yet, so I can't comment on handling. As for a viewfinder, there will be one that bolts onto the new proprietary hot shoe on top. That's currently how you attach the flash or an external stereo mic (which bypasses the built-in mics). I've very rarely used t

I mostly do outdoor wildlife photography, so I like viewfinders -- I can't see the screen in the sunlight. Good that there's at least the option for one on the NEX if you want one.

For small pancake lenses, I agree -- this, or equivalently the Olympus Micro 4/3 cameras, are a good direction for design to go in. But I'd be interested to see how it handles with a 1.5 or 2-pound on the front, though; if your hand on the lens has to bear most of the weight all the time, it seems

Well, I'm used to "unbalanced" on SLRs as well, when I attach my 800mm mirror lens to my old film SLR. To solve the problem, a tripod mount is attached to the lens, not the camera. Same thing works here with mirror-less digital cameras, except they will be more common. I believe the coming 18-200mm E-mount lens from Sony already includes its own tripod mount.

And what puts it over the top for me is that the new E mount lenses also work on Sony's new line of pro-sumer camcorders, which are similarly compa

Well, maybe improve accuracy in some cases, but the contrast detection AF of non-DSLRs is usually slower than phase detection AF of DSLRs. The very best CDAF is comparable with PDAF of average DSLRs, and then there are the sports cameras...

Have you tried a modern digital viewfinder? For example the VF of the Olympus EP2. I'd say it has enough resolution to not make a significant difference. It has 100% coverage (of course:-) and 1.15x mag. And for those still life photos you can magnify a portion of the view (up to 10x?) to fine-tune the focus. And best of all, the flange focal distance is small enough to use Leica M-lenses at infinity -- but the 2x "crop factor" may be a curse or a blessing...

Many large manufacturers of DSLR's, such as Canon and Sony, have started removing the mirrors from their prosumer-level camera's in exchange for sensors that can work in different modes.

Well, Canon (and Nikon) are still on the fence. Nikon may (or may not) present a mirrorless system camera at Photokina, Sony has their new NEX-system, then there's Olympus and Panasonic (micro four thirds), and yet another system, Samsung NX. Even Ricoh is jumping on the bandwagon, in their own idiosyncratic way [dpreview.com].

I have to say the CDAF on my Panasonic G1 when using the kit lens feels as fast as the 70-200 f/4L AF on my 40D. This is definitely "fast AF" territory. This is not the case with the other lenses i've tried on the lineup, but it definitely goes to show that it is possible.

And the best thing about CDAF is that it actually gets the damn focus right where it needs to be. Unlike everything else out there. The fact that latest DSLRs have "AF fine tune" settings to deal with the mess that is PDAF attests to this.

I created this blog to document the steps I'm taking in making an iPhone DSLR.The honest truth is, I really dont know anything about DSLRs aside from the fact that you press the button and it snaps the picture.So whether the feat is actually possible or not, I'm in to to find out.

Also:

Now by no means would I consider myself a professional photographer.Heck... I am by would I even consider myself an amateur photographer.The truth is I really know nothing about photography.Before starting this endeavor the most I knew about cameras was that you push the button and it takes a picture.

Yes, this camera uses a single lens and yes, it's digital. So does that $20 piece of junk point-and-shoot digital camera that you can buy at walmart. By your logic every single modern day camera is actually a DSLR because they use one lens and are digital.

"A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that uses a mechanical mirror system and pentaprism to direct light from the lens to an optical viewfinder on the back of the camera."The iphone does not use a mechanical mirror system and pentaprism and therefore is not a DSLR, period. There's no debate here. It's simply not a DSLR camera.

From the TFA:"Now by no means would I consider myself a professional photographer. Heck&#8230; I am by would I even consider myself an amateur photographer. The truth is I really know nothing about photography. " Link: http://iphonedslr.com/blog/archives/42fb

By his own admission, he doesn't really know what he's doing or why this is simply a bad idea.

Why make up terminology and debate what really isn't debatable when the correct terminology exists:
"Electronic Viewfinder with Interchangeable Lenses" or EVIL, which is the term that has gained huge popularity to describe the Olympus EP-1 and EP-2 and other digital cameras with new optical viewfinders and interchangeable lenses

In reality the terms for the cameras have never described the lens system so you can not simply called it a DSL. For example:
- SLR: (Single lens reflex) Describes a came

It killed the consumer GPS market and it will kill the consumer digicam market too. It hasn't and won't touch pro-sumer let alone pro GPS/camera markets. "Phones" are becoming the jack of all trades, master of none.

And read it, not just look at the pictures. Nothing external to the camera that you can see has anything to do with SLR, its all internal mechanics and not the fact that you can screw on a different lens.

"SLR" is the abbreviation of "Single Lens Reflex"; it's defined by a camera having a reflex mirror (go figure, huh?); the ability to change lenses has nothing to do with this definition.

With that out of the way, I feel compelled to point out that this adds a very small amount of functionality for the bulk. As any photographer knows, no phone will be able to work with depth of field [wikipedia.org] because the sensor is too small. All you're getting is the ability to change focal lengths instead of walking 10 feet.

I'll skip leaving a "this is not a DSLR" comment because that has already been covered.

While its interesting from the "can this be done?" standpoint, I see absolutely no practical reason for doing this. He's basically taking a point and shoot cellphone camera and putting another lens on it, and it gains nothing useful by doing so. The device is no longer pocketable, and the pictures certainly won't be as good as the DSLR the lens came from could produce. If you're going to lug something around that you can'

Exactly, he may as well glue his iPhone to a DSLR. As well as getting much better quality images he will probably not suffer reception loss by holding his iPhone 'incorrectly'.

It would be cool if he had managed to link his phone (I'll use a generic term here) directly to the memory card slot of a DSLR, so taking a picture would go straight to the phone memory. Or alternatively use wireless transmission from the camera to automatically send the pic to his phone and from there upload it to his blog/facebook p

Apart from the fact the focal plane distance and distortion due to other lens elements in the existing iPhone lens package screw up this idea...the builder also picked a Canon EF lens, which by default, unpowered is left at full aperture. Canon EF lenses stop down on command through the serial port in the EF interface. If this guy had actually managed to interface the EF mount electronically to the iPhone's camera subsystem...well, that would be pretty cool.

I created this blog to document the steps I'm taking in making an iPhone DSLR. The honest truth is, I really dont know anything about DSLRs aside from the fact that you press the button and it snaps the picture. So whether the feat is actually possible or not, I'm in to to find out.

While the project is probably fun for anon, this setup misses pretty much all advantages of DLSR. To mention a few:

* Autofocus in most lenses* Measuring focus before, on and after the plane of the sensor, making for even faster focus calculations* Cleaner exposure with less movement artefacts due to mechanical shutter* Less noise in the pictures because the sensor is not needed for viewfinding and thus does not heat up* Large image sensor

The Canon one also has a 35mm sensor, the bigger the sensor in physical size, the better image quality.The Canon one has very good processing power behind the sensor.The Canon one has over 12mpThe Canon one has been designed to focus the image from the lens.The Canon one has much better ISO range and smarter Automatic settings.The Canon one can manipulate the aperture and focus of the lens

I would not be surprised to find out that you can get a better result with a magnifying glass taped to the phone.

DSLR's are superior because, among other things, their sensors are larger, Over 1 sq cm. The lenses are built to provide images that cover that area. How does this adapter funnel that light into the little iPhone lens? Some fancy optics?

No "funnel" or "fancy optics" are necessary, assuming that the lens mount is fitted in such a way that it focuses correctly to the image plane through the iPhone's lens. You can use a regular SLR lens with a smaller sensor, but it's going to be an extremely long focal leng

an SLR is a camera that has various mechanical moving parts, that allow you to split the same light that will be hitting the film or sensor, so that you can see this with your own eye, and then the millisecond you hit the shutter button, the Reflex mirror, jumps out of the way, and the shot is taken with almost the exact same light you where seeing that was sent to your eyes.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-lens_reflex_camera [wikipedia.org]

This is just a phone that might as well be taped to a large magnifying glass, there are no SLR parts in the lens of a SLR camera.

I've had issues even acquiring images under a 100x magnification lens with 200x the amount of photon flux. I'm talking about having replaced the crap incandescent filament bulb with LED and we still have problems even with the diodes being configured to output maximum luminous flux.

It's just a problem involving optical physics. Maybe when we get the lenses lined with a silver compound, we can get better resolution images.

Well, there is already a lens in front of the iPhone's sensor, so I don't think crop factor due to sensor size comes into play.

The iPhone 4 is supposed to have a 28mm equivalent Field of View. I'm not sure what kind of vignetting this would give on most lenses, but let's assume we put a full-frame lens on it and there is no vignetting, my guess would be that the effective 'crop-factor' would be something around 1.25 (35/28).